Tuesday, December 23, 2014

WWE Money In The Bank 2014 Review

The Money In The Bank Briefcase & The Vacant WWE World Title are both up for grabs!!

WWE Money In The Bank 2014

Boston, Massachusetts 6/29/14

I should note that there was no match on the Kickoff Show. Instead, we get an in-ring promo from Daniel Bryan, who talks about his injury, and getting stripped of the WWE World Title. Bo Dallas comes out, telling him to "Bo-lieve", but Bryan responds by saying Dallas should "Bo-leave!". Bryan & The Crowd chant "YES!" as the Kickoff Show closes.

1.) WWE Tag Team Titles - The Usos vs. The Wyatt Family: ***3/4

These two teams brawled during the John Cena/Bray Wyatt Last Man Standing Match at Payback (Luke Harper & Erick Rowan assisting Wyatt, while The Usos, The WWE Tag Team Champions, helped Cena), which naturally led to this match. It turned out to be a really good opener. Lots of great back & forth action from two of the best teams in WWE at the time. Eventually The Usos are able to pick up the win, retaining the WWE Tag Team Titles!

2.) WWE Divas Title - Paige vs. Naomi (with Cameron): **3/4

Over the last few weeks, they have been slowly building towards Cameron & Naomi's eventually split. Naomi, the better worker of the two, is challenging for the Divas Title here against Paige. It was nice to see the Diva's Title Match not in the "death spot" for once. This was actually a pretty decent Divas Title Match. I'm a massive Paige fan, and Naomi is definitely one of the more promising Divas on the roster, so it resulted in a pretty solid Divas Match. Paige gets the win with the Ram-Paige, and we get more subtle teases of the Cameron/Naomi breakup.

3.) Adam Rose vs. Damien Sandow: *1/2

Since the PPV is Boston, Damien Sandow is dressed up as Paul Revere. Yep...you read that right. It's honestly hard to believe that Damien Sandow actually won The Money In The Bank Ladder Match last year. He's fallen so much since then, and it's pretty sad. He has a quick match with, and loses to, Adam Rose, in a match mainly meant to get Rose over. Not much else to say otherwise.

I should note that WWE Intercontinental Champion Bad News Barrett was originally supposed to be in this match, but was pulled after getting injured at the hands of Jack Swagger. Even with the loss of Barrett, this match was still incredibly awesome!! Of course the main story here was Dean Ambrose getting his hands on Seth Rollins (with this being their first real encounter after Rollins turned on The Shield), but you had a lot of great, and sometimes dangerous action throughout. This included Dean Ambrose hitting Seth Rollins with a Superplex off the top of a ladder, and Rollins getting backdropped of the top of a ladder, onto a bridging ladder, by Kofi Kingston. Incredible stuff in this one. Everyone in here looked motivated, and that certainly helped. Eventually the match was ruined by Kane's interference, which led to Seth Rollins winning, but despite that, the match was still really great.

5.) Goldust & Stardust vs. RybAxel (Ryback & Curtis Axel): **1/4

If you'll recall, Cody Rhodes "left" his team with his brother, Goldust, after failing his partner over the last few months with a string of losses. He then reemerged, transformed, as Stardust. This was the PPV debut for Stardust. This was a pretty standard match. Goldust & Stardust pick up the win. Not much else to say about it, other than the fact that Curtis Axel was wearing so different attire tonight. This was mainly used to help get Stardust over, and not much else.

6.) Rusev (with Lana) vs. Big E: ***1/4

This is a rematch from Payback. I'd have to say that this was a bit of an improvement over that previous match. They went out there and had a really solid Hoss Division matchup. Of course, the victor was never in doubt, as Rusev once again defeated Big E.

7.) Special Guest Referee: Fandango - Layla vs. Summer Rae: DUD

So I think what happened here is that Summer Rae left to be in a movie (The Marine 3 or 4, I can't remember which), and Fandango got a new dancer in Layla. Summer Rae returned, which led to this feud (which somehow involved milk & kitty litter) and this match, where Fandango is the Special Guest Referee. This match sucked, and the crowd didn't care about it at all. It was bad. Layla won, can we please move on?

Daniel Bryan was forced to vacate the WWE World Title due to injury, and The Authority (Triple H & Stephanie McMahon) put together this match as a way to crown a new champion. Part of the story going in is that The Authority didn't want Cena to win the title. While there was no way they were going to top the Money In The Bank Ladder Match from earlier, this was still a really good. It did start slow, but it got better over time. We did get a lot of unique & dangerous spots, as we always do in these types of matches. At one point, Randy Orton got busted open hard way. Eventually, John Cena was able to overcome the odds (as he always does) and, to the dismay of The Authority, wins the WWE World Title to close the show!

Overall: 7.75/10
This show was good, but not great. In ways it was kind of similar to the Extreme Rules PPV from nearly two months prior. You did have one great match (The Money In The Bank Ladder Match), and two really good matches (The opening match for the WWE Tag Team Titles & The WWE Title Ladder Match). Other than those matches, the undercard was relatively average, though for the most part, it wasn't that bad. Event the Adam Rose/Damien Sandow match had somewhat of a purpose. The only match that I would say was really bad was the Layla/Summer Rae/Fandango match, but other than that, the rest of the undercard was actually not that bad. Like I mentioned earlier, this show was good, but other than one match, really didn't reach a level of being great.